Comments on: How to block Spam Bot (Spider) from PSI (Performance Systems International)

By: yellowfever

yellowfever — Sat, 02 Jul 2011 15:49:19 +0000

I have a particular website that we’ve moved from 2 different hosting providers over to GoDaddy because the site kept becoming “unreachable” at the other hosting providers and they couldn’t fix it (DoS attacks), the last time it was down for 2 months. Anyway after the latest move, all was okay until yesterday evening. Now on GoDaddy, getting the DoS on the site and the logs show PSINETA as the culprit. I don’t get it, this is an inocculous site, what is the interest the government has? By the way, the site is still down and GoDaddy can’t get it back up. The tracert has the last 20 of the 30 hops breaking down at … you guessed it cogentco.com’s servers. Yet, inside GoDaddy they get the site to come up, it is just the rest of the world that see’s the problems.

By: m3wt

m3wt — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:31:22 +0000

I have just installed mobloquer, a graphical interface for moblock which is the linux equivalent of peerguardian. After a few minutes of running the program I checked the logs and was surprised to see several incoming connections from Performance Systems International. I googled this company and it led me to this site. I am very much concerned after reading some comments. Nobody seem to know who these people are.

By: HiddenDark

HiddenDark — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 01:34:52 +0000

The feds are crawling your sites to create their own search engine because
they google search engine results aren’t 100% accurate due to google
bans or blocks some sites.

So they want an accurate search engine for themselves.

So they built their own google search engine essentially.

It is also a proxy for them so they do searches and
visit sites personally, so it is both bots and people.

By: G.Curtis

G.Curtis — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:05:47 +0000

Hi guys.
I get hit, and I wonder how and why. My site is purely astro-mathematical, and PSI is hitting me.
There is no way they could have found my site by accident, because it is to replace a defunct site and I haven’t got round to promoting it yet. There are no links to lead to it.
(http://homepages.tesco.net/astroequation)
My tracker reports there is never a refering link, so they must be crawling at random or using a keyword search. As far as I am aware they have not done any harm, and as to stealing info, they sure as hell wouldn’t understand it anyway!
If it is CIA or related then the only interest they could have in my page is the implication of the real existence of alien superpower, which most officials would regard as nonsense? Surely?
I am baffled.
Cheers
Astroequation.

By: ScaryMadman

ScaryMadman — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:06:19 +0000

Guess what?

ISP is a US Gvt. Proxy Service…

38.0.0.0 – 38.255.255.255

ALL OF ‘EM!

By: Tyler

Tyler — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 16:44:18 +0000

Dudes and dudettes, this is the FBI who used this company as a front. Block them as much as possible

By: stu

stu — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 17:30:40 +0000

pretty funny (or not so funny) suggestions that PSI is some type of US government-backed snooper..They’ve visited a new blog 233 times in 15 days, average time on site 2 minutes plus…like they have nothing better to do….but the blog (parody of the crook bernard madoff) is becoming extremely popular—2000+ unique visitors a day…and aside from PSI, the SEC has visited it 15 different times…based on the IQ of government employees working within ‘enforcement’ departments, it would seem they don’t know the difference between butter and margarine.

http://www.bernard-madoff-scam.blogspot.com

By: Design And Promote

Design And Promote — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:59:38 +0000

I noticed the same issue but besides the 38 rage IP it also showed a competitor of mine name associated with the visit.

I’m guessing PSI is a proxy and my competitor was clicking on my PPC ads and trying not to be noticed.

I blocked the whole range by adding Deny from 38.0.0.0/8 to my .htaccess file.

By: Steve

Steve — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 06:00:14 +0000

I’ve blocked PSI for a long time with any noticeable problems. Just logged a sweep of 111 domains on my server, loading the index page off every site, all within about 90 seconds, from 20 different 38.105.xxx.xxx ip addresses. I just assume they are content thieves.

By: SIlaz

SIlaz — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 18:39:16 +0000

Yeah these guys are obviously US government. They seem to spider anything new you put up on a new domain name. I can’t say for sure whether they are actually stealing our intellectual property, and I personally have not put up on the web any of my dats that I consider particually valuable except things that I would expect people to want to share. In accordance with the spirit of the freedom of information on the web as I understand it. So these assholes don’t have any of my more valuable data a nd designs unless they have obtained my data illegally through other means. If they are intelligence related then they are probably just data junkies, and like to know everything that is up there on the web. In which case I hope they very very bored of thier jobs, and only have ugly wives to go home to…

By: The Moderator

The Moderator — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:09:59 +0000

After more investigating, the IP range I listed above traces back to snap.com. Specifically, Perfect Market Technologies, Inc. which owns snap. So, I unblocked them.. Dang, I thought I had Homeland Security on my butt.

By: The Moderator

The Moderator — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 17:05:03 +0000

just a random spot check of my logs showed PSI is interested in what I have to say. SWEET! Then I Googled “Performance Systems International” then I went to http://samspade.org/whois/38.98.19.67 then I went to my IP Ban tool in C-Panel and added 38.98.19.64/26 to the ban list (which gave me a range of 38.98.19.64 – 38.98.19.127). So we shall see if this knocks PSI out of my logs or if I’ll have to add a whole new range to my kill list.

By: Joe

Joe — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 04:56:45 +0000

The reason I came to this site was because I did a test as speedtest.net and when I checked to see who was the fastest provider in my area it gave Performance Systems International as the best, and not just by a small margin, there numbers were much higher than any one else’s. The thing is PSI only showed in the results when I checked the box that said “click here to include schools and corporations.” So, I did a google search on PSI and it led me to here.

By: A friend

A friend — Sat, 29 Nov 2008 06:21:47 +0000

I have a high school friend who works in the Department of Homeland Security and he tells me that the bot in question is part of the Homeland Securitys team. Whether it is a person or crawler I dont know but it has gone to your domian on a keyword basis.
Be afraid? Only if you have something to hide.

By: thanatos

thanatos — Sat, 15 Nov 2008 00:55:27 +0000

I too have had problems with these guys – and just because of one simple blog post. I think these guys are about massive IP (intellectual property) theft! If you put original thoughts onto the web these guys will attempt to intercept and remove them from ‘the record’ so that they can come back later and be ‘first to file’. They are just a massive patent/IP sieve and are probably in cahoots with intelligence types and big bizness – this just looks like a front for a Myhrvold style IP land grab where they don’t even have to work at being original; all they have to do is sift out original thoughts and ideas and steal them for themselves. The FBI should stomp on these guys, but I think they are probably helping them – traitorously manipulating the Patriot act and the DMCA for personal gain – betcha agents ‘investigating’ such crimes have nice cushy jobs lined up for them post-’enforcement-career in the companies they are supposedly investigating, just like most politicians and military intelligence types… And I think that google has a part in this too – selectively applying provenance to ideas to facilitate this IP theft – this is the scam of the century, if not millenium.